News Room

February 6, 2002

MIDDLEBURY,
VT -Virtuoso
pianist Claude Frank will return to Middlebury College to
perform at 8 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 15, in the Concert Hall at
the Center for the Arts on South Main Street (Route 30). A
concert with his daughter, violinist Pamela Frank, was
originally scheduled for this time and date but an injury
will prevent her from joining him.

Frank
is an elder statesman of music having made his debut in 1959
with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. His
career has taken him around the world with the foremost
orchestras and chamber groups. Frank has made his mark at
prestigious festivals and is a renowned teacher at a variety
of universities, including the Yale School of Music and
Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music.

The
Kansas City Evening News noted that Frank has an "ability to
dramatize and colorize, to capsulize the composer's
complexities." The El Paso Times declared, "His playing
epitomized Beethoven as it ought to be played."

His
recordings define his position as a master interpreter of
the piano literature of Beethoven. Frank, who was born in
Germany, fled Nazi Europe for the United States where he
became the first American to record all 32 of Beethoven's
piano sonatas. The RCA recording and subsequent performances
of the cycle were a milestone of his career. Time magazine
proclaimed it one of the year's "10 best," and High Fidelity
and Stereo Review recommended it above other renditions.
Fanfare magazine's Charles Trimball noted, "I was struck by
several things that set him apart from some of his recorded
colleagues: his extraordinary control of dynamics;
his scrupulous fidelity to the text; his very fluent
finger technique; and his refined sense of sound and
feeling for ideal balances and textural clarity."

Frank's
Vermont concert is sponsored by the Middlebury College
Performing Arts Series. Tickets for the performance are $10
for general admission and $8 for seniors. Reservations are
required for a pre-performance dinner at 6:30 p.m. at
Rehearsals Cafe in the Center for the Arts. For tickets or
dinner reservations, call the College box office at
802-443-6433.